


Threadbare

by viceindustrious



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Hate Sex, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 07:26:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9425639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viceindustrious/pseuds/viceindustrious
Summary: Set before the start of series one, just a short scene between Flint and Vane.





	

The sky over Nassau is the colour of a bruise - Flint turns his face up toward it until it fills his head and stretches to the horizons of his eyes. This could be London, but the rain (when it comes) will fall warm and heavy, fat drops rolling lazy off the coconut palms. On shore, Vane is stripped to his waist, skin gleaming in the humidity. Flint observes him as the boats row in, one figure amongst a swarm of many. All around there's the creak of timber, whistles and shouts from the men hauling goods out and across the sand and the cries of gulls mixing in amongst them until there’s no difference to any of it.

Vane’s eyes fall on him as the boat rocks to a stop in the shallows and he raises the bottle in his hand, waves a greeting that’s half sardonic salute. Flint grits his teeth and looks back over his shoulder to the Walrus. They had met at sea once, not that long after he arrived in Nassau, the colours of the Ranger snapping in the wind. Vane had fired a volley of shot high into the air out of respect once he'd spied whose ship she was. Even the roughest sort of civility is barely holding out now, it had started to fray not long after Teach cast off from the island, little by little, thread by thread.

Eleanor’s got a steady hand but then Eleanor is part of the problem too when Vane is sure she’s playing favourites. He thinks Vane probably loves her in in some crude fashion. He tells himself he wouldn’t think about it at all if he didn’t feel the resent brewing, thick and tangible and billowing from Vane as he sits sprawled back in his seat, watching as Eleanor leads him alone into her private rooms. There’s nothing to read in his expression but Flint knows he is itching to do something. He feels the itch himself.

It’s not long after night fall and the men are already deep in their cups. Flint steps over a sailor mumbling something to himself flat on his back in the sand. There’s singing going on around a bonfire, faces ruddy with rum, blazing shiny and scarlet in the reflected light of the fire. Vane hails him, propped against a piece of driftwood he calls out some sort of congratulations on the prize they’d taken that day.

A French Brigantine, sugar and indigo, it hadn’t fallen easily. There’s still blood sunk into his clothes. The grin on Vane’s face reminds him of the knife hanging at his belt. He doesn’t flinch from the thought of the day’s massacre, it’s just one more grim necessity. Vane wants to drink to it.

When their eyes meet over the fire Vane doesn’t have to ask, _you think you’re too good for us?_ Flint doesn’t have to answer, _yes._

He’ll drink with his own crew, but Vane? Does it matter if Vane was not the one who murdered the wife and children of the last governor? It may as well have been. His crew loll around like wild dogs, snapping at each other, fighting over scraps; no discipline, no sense of the possibility that something greater could be made here. As long as there’s something to fuck and something to drink, why think past the next dawn? Vane is the sort of man that even Thomas would have had to admit would need to find himself swinging at the end of a rope.  

He feels himself sneering and Vane nods, very, very slowly, still smiling that lazy cutthroat smile. His pulse throbs at his temples, something is close to happening here. Vane’s man, Rackham, must sense it too because he gives Flint a hurried once over, somehow both shrewd and alarmed and lays his hand on Vane’s arm. Whatever he speaks into Vane’s ear, Flint can’t hear it above the raucous chorus of the men and the snap and roar of the bonfire and when Vane breaks his gaze to turn to Rackham, Flint forces himself to leave the circle while he still has the will.

Miranda could work out the tight, snarled thing in his chest, he is almost sure. She can so very often. Sometimes there is peace in that and sometimes a hollow ache, where in the quiet and calm more fragile ghosts than these barbs of anger creep back to haunt him. There’s comfort in this for now and he lets the knot in his heart grow tighter, a cage of smouldering spurs, as he sits alone and far from the dockside lights; bare feet in the cooling sand, a bottle of something strong beside him and the moon rising over the ocean.

He drains the bottle, lobs it at the vague jut of a rock further down toward the shore but it misses and lands silently in the sand, no starburst shatter of glass. Flint closes his eyes in disgust and lets his head fall back against the rough bark of the tree he’s leaning on.

“I would have thought you’d be off fucking that puritan cunt of yours.”

Flint opens one eye. Vane is a silhouette in the moonlight, familiar as the shadow of the fortress against the night sky. His hands are empty, his tone flat and gravel low as always. Flint makes a fist and grins an ugly grin in the darkness at the weight of the metal ringing his fingers. The tip of Vane’s chin is an invitation. He doesn’t make a move before Flint has pulled himself to his feet.

Flint draws back his clenched fist, the glint in Vane’s eyes says he knows it’s coming, but he swings for him anyway and the rasp of Vane’s stubble kisses across his knuckles, just that and Vane’s ducked the blow and Flint feels a sharp, white burst of pain as Vane’s elbow cracks into his ribs. He sucks down the pain on his next breath and when Vane charges him, head down, he hammers his arm forward and drives it into the hard, tense plane of Vane’s stomach.

Cotton rips, Vane grabbing at Flint’s shirt to stay upright. He’s staggering a little, a shake in his knees as though he’s about to go down on them. Flint’s winds his arm to hit him again when Vane lurches up with a grunt, smashing his forehead into the bridge of Flint’s nose and they both go down together.

His nose gushes wet heat, he whips his head to the side, snorting out blood and the sand sticks to his face. He can feel it on his lips, on his teeth when he bares his mouth in a snarl. Vane is still winded, wheezing on top of him. Vane’s hands press down on his chest, just below his collar bone, holding him down in the sand and Vane’s legs are tangled with his and his hips are pushing down against him too and his cock, his cock is like an iron rod.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Flint spits.

He’s hard too. Breathing heavy, their chests are almost pushed together. Vane’s pendant lies cool on his own skin and Flint grabs the cord twisting it around in his fist until it starts to cut into Vane’s throat. It makes him harder, the sight of the tendons in Vane’s neck straining, the flush of the blood pooling under his skin. Vane smacks him across the face, dashing an imprint of Flint’s blood across his knuckles and Flint groans and rocks his hips against Vane’s.

The cord snaps.

Vane, hunched over him, coughs and then laughs, a gritty low chuckle. He stares at Flint and Flint stares back, eyes wandering from the flex of Vane’s muscle, broad and lean, carved like stone by the sea, down to the shameless, thick shape of his cock pressing through his trousers. He stinks like sex and rum and three weeks out on open water. _He’s every opposite to-_

Flint grimaces and reaches up to roll the palm of his hand over Vane’s erection.

“What are you waiting for then?” Flint growls.

He doesn’t wait for Vane, shucks off his trousers and rolls over onto his stomach. His own blood is a dark patch in the sand beneath him. Vane’s weight presses down on top of him, the boiled leather of his trousers sticking against his own bare skin but he can feel the naked heat of Vane’s cock against him along with the musky tangle of Vane’s hair falling over the back of his neck. Vane spits and there’s one finger inside him.

“I’m not a fucking woman, just fuck me.”

“Yeah?”

Vane bites hard into his shoulder. Flint’s cock throbs, fucking a painful divot in the sand. The angry wedge of Vane's cockhead spreads him open and the breach is intense, searing, wonderful. Vane groans and puts his forearm like a bar across Flint’s throat pulling him back into that first rapacious thrust, half choking him at the same time. A hot slick of sweat slides between his back and Vane’s chest. Vane tries to take one of his hands and wrap their fingers together but Flint makes a fist so Vane grabs his wrist instead and pushes it out in the sand above his head.

The taste of iron is still in Flint’s mouth, sharper even. He isn’t losing himself in this, not like he wanted, not like the ringing blur of a blow to the head or the percussive obliteration of a proper beating. He arches back into Vane and reaches up to clasp clumsily at his hair, pulls his head down to feel Vane breathing, intimate, on his skin.

After, Vane rolls off and lies, panting in the sand. Flint huffs into the beach, his eyes screwed up and the sound of his breathing loud in his ears. His skin prickles with the wetness on his belly and between his legs and he pulls his trousers up hastily. Vane’s still supine with his cock out, unconcerned and Flint feels an uneasy wave of contempt though he’s not sure who for.

He’s still looked at Vane when Vane tugs him down, not rough, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Tugs him down and kisses him.

Blood and sand the softness of Vane’s tongue. A heartbeat and then – Flint rears back and hits him square in the jaw, as hard as he can.

“Stay the fuck away from me.”

Vane’s eyes narrow, darken. He spits into the sand and looks at him and Flint could almost go shatter that bottle himself and shove the broken shards up under his throat for it, but he just stumbles to his feet, seething.

“Understood.” Is all Vane says.

 


End file.
